What is Bitcoin Knots?

Bitcoin Knots is a derivative of Bitcoin Core (since 2011 December) with a collection of
improvements backported from and sometimes maintained outside of the master git tree.
More details on the enhancements in Bitcoin Knots are listed below the downloads.

Please note:
Bitcoin Knots includes some new features that have not yet been tested to the same extent as those included in Bitcoin Core.
While we make a reasonable effort to ensure they are safe, there are no guarantees.
Use of Bitcoin Knots is (as with Bitcoin Core) always at your own risk!

Download Bitcoin Knots

Security notice

Please note:
This webserver, like almost all webservers, is not under our exclusive physical access, and therefore cannot be trusted to not be compromised.
Always verify the correct PGP signature (from Luke Dashjr's PGP key) on any downloads to avoid risk of malware.
Note that his PGP key is also hosted on bitcoin.org, so you can (and should, if you don't already have it from another trusted source) download from at least two independent webservers and ensure they match.

SHA256 hashes of all downloads, signed by Luke Dashjr's PGP key, are available under the "digital signatures" link in the download box.
If this link is missing, broken, or fails to verify, do not trust the downloaded files, and contact him immediately.

Enhancement sets

Features that will be available in the next release of Bitcoin Core are highlighted in green.

Packaging cleanups ("syslibs")

Adds options to build using system LevelDB, libsecp256k1, and UniValue
libraries, and/or without protobuf (see ./configure --help for usage).

Please note this may be dangerous and make theft from you possible if used with versions of
the LevelDB or libsecp256k1
libraries which have not been audited to meet the bug-for-bug compatibility required by Bitcoin's consensus protocol.
These options are disabled by default for this reason.

It also adds options to disable building bitcoin-cli or bitcoin-tx individually, and avoids involving foreign git trees in the build.

History

Bitcoin Knots began in 2011 December as Bitcoin Next-Test, a derivative of Bitcoin Core's "master" branch with upcoming and proposed features merged in manner as unbiased as possible toward the changes themselves.
In 2014, due to time constraints and a desire to maintain a more stable and well-maintained derivative, I began instead to base the branch off the latest stable release, and include only modifications that both looked reasonably safe and I did not personally consider problematic or flawed; along with this change, since it was no longer an unbiased derivative, I renamed it to Bitcoin Core "ljr", and later Bitcoin LJR.
With 0.12 in 2016, the project was once again renamed (to "Bitcoin Knots") and has a goal of being a general enhanced derivative of the reference Bitcoin Core software.